The UK government has dropped plans for mandatory digital IDs for workers. Keir Starmer previously said the scheme, due to be introduced in 2029, would be compulsory to verify the right to work as part of a crackdown on migration. Instead, workers will now be given the choice of using other documents, such as biometric passports, to prove their identity. Donald Trump says the US will take “very strong action” if Iran carries out the execution of anti-government protesters, which is reportedly due to begin today with the hanging of Erfan Soltani. The 26-year-old has allegedly been tried, convicted and sentenced to death for “waging war against God” after being arrested near Tehran last Thursday. Small lifestyle changes in middle age can significantly cut the risk of early death, says The Times. According to new research that looked at more than 135,000 people over eight years, a daily 10-minute stroll slashed the risk by 15%, while reducing the time spent sitting down each day by 30 minutes cut it by 7%.

There was something missing from the Golden Globes on Sunday night, says Philip Patrick in The Spectator. These days, a celebrity glamfest isn’t complete without a “healthy dose” of posturing on the issue du jour, whether it be OscarsSoWhite, women’s empowerment, climate change or, more recently, the plight of the Palestinians. This year, apart from the odd “anti-ICE” badge, such political showing-off was oddly in abeyance. With thousands of protesters murdered by Iran’s bloodthirsty mullahs in the past two weeks, this is “grotesque”. Bar a few honourable exceptions – including JK Rowling and Juliette Binoche – a wholly uncharacteristic reticence has taken hold. How to explain the “silence of the hams”?

This is a longstanding reflex on the left, says Yascha Mounk in The Free Press. It reflects an unconscious logic that has plagued leftist intellectuals since at least the days of George Orwell. As he put it, their “real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of Western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism”. For far too many progressives, their deepest commitment isn’t to a particular principle or hope for the world – it is the belief that their own countries and societies are the root of profound evil. This creates in the mind a “simple demonology”: anyone on “our side” is bad, therefore anyone against us must be good. In the past week it hasn’t been hard to find “harebrained leftists” maligning Iranian protesters as “hapless agents of imperialism” or denying the basic fact that Nicolás Maduro was a horrible dictator. They may not go all the way to celebrating the Ayatollah, say, but they can’t quite bring themselves to wish for the downfall of his anti-Western regime.